Defender OCTA vs Ford Raptor T1+: Dakar Rally Track Test

The OCTA has arrived in its natural habitat – or, at least, the place it was created to thrive. This is not Chelsea; it is Portimão’s rally course, and the Defender is attacking it in a manner that no other modern SUV would contemplate.

It is odd, really. Until now, nobody has produced an SUV expressly intended for high-speed off-road driving, apart from the Americans. They understand the appeal of bolting Fox dampers beneath an F150 and heading out to have fun. In Europe, meanwhile, we get SUVs trying to impersonate super saloons, or hard-core off-roaders returned to urban life with V8 engines and 23in wheels. The Defender OCTA is new territory for us: different, slightly ridiculous and a Defender with a revised focus. It moves beyond the ever-present G63, given not only a twin-turbo V8 but also a clear mission and reason for being.

Go and play. That is essentially the brief. It does not feel prissy or precious; instead, it seems like the sort of vehicle that would display battle scars with pride, should an owner be brave enough to treat their £145,300 purchase that way. We are doing precisely that today, as the Defender charges along the routes and tracks rising into the hills above the circuit.

Photography: Mark Riccioni

Defender OCTA: made for fast off-road driving

This is my preferred kind of off-roading: the rapid charge rather than the slow crawl. The OCTA behaves like a 2.5-tonne rally car, Scandi-flicking into corners before firing rocks and stones towards the landscape and its own reinforced underbody as the 626bhp V8 goes to work. Through the more heavily banked bends, it occasionally generates more than 1g of lateral load. That is seriously substantial grip.

Its suspension is the key. The OCTA uses the same 6D hydraulically cross-linked system found beneath the Range Rover Sport SV, which did not impress us at PCOTY last year. On a circuit, that car hopped and skipped about, with more tyre grip than the system could manage. Here, on chunky 20in Goodyear Wranglers, the outcome is completely different. It is pliant and controlled, handles the weight superbly and, best of all, avoids the juddering and shuddering as it charges along because the suspension is insulated so effectively.

There is admittedly little feel through the steering or other controls, but driving quickly inspires confidence. It feels like a robust truck, entirely willing to indulge the most enjoyable sort of messing about. Next year, Defender plans to demonstrate just how durable and tough it really is by entering something closely linked to the Dakar rally.

There, it will face a proper battering from the utterly unhinged Ford Raptor T1+. Naturally it will: the Raptor is a top-flight silhouette racer intended, somehow, to evoke a pick-up. The Defender D7XR, by contrast, will race in the T2/Stock class. It is about time. We have repeatedly said the Defender should demonstrate its dependability in an extreme challenge, and it will get that opportunity in Saudi Arabia come January 2026.

Ford Raptor T1+ and Nani Roma at Portimão

The Raptor has arrived with Nani. Nani is a maniac. As we launch into the scenery – and I belatedly realise I have forgotten to attach the HANS device to my helmet – it immediately becomes clear that he does not interpret tracks as you or I would. We see corridors, their limits defined by bushes, trees, gullies and banks.

Dakar is not like that, though, and neither is Nani. It is about navigation: you travel wherever you wish in order to reach the required point as quickly and directly as possible. That is now how he approaches our rally stage. A right-hander is approaching, yet he has turned left, and we are now hurtling over an off-camber slope after he spotted a shortcut that avoids the narrow slalom between two trees. Vegetation brushes against the Raptor’s armoured underside, doing little more than tickling its belly.

It is wide-angle driving, the reverse of tunnel vision, and Nani’s route radar is working in a way I cannot begin to understand. Next, he points directly at an almost vertical bank taller than the Raptor. Brace, brace, brace. We smash into it, and the suspension seems not to notice, although our trajectory changes completely. All I can see is sky. Everything falls silent. A moment later, all I can see is ground.

Do you know those Arctic foxes that Attenborough narrated, diving headfirst into snow? The Raptor performs a creditable imitation. I tense every muscle. Again, the suspension and 37in tyres absorb the impact of a six foot nosedive as effortlessly as a Rolls tackles a speed bump.

Once I have regained my land legs, I take a look underneath. The twin-damper set-up at every corner is surrounded by so many pipes, tubes and valves that it resembles a steam engine. It is absurd. Yet its capability is extraordinary. I have been fortunate enough to drive several Dakar cars during the past decade, including the BRX Hunter and Audi’s high-tech RS Q e-tron hybrid, but this genuinely changes the picture.

14 minutes 17 seconds

It feels quicker and more agile, carrying its mass more lightly. It comes across more like a WRC car. Perhaps that is less surprising once you discover it was engineered and developed by M-Sport, Ford’s long-standing rally partner. It is the finest thing imaginable to drive off road, not least because of the outrageous sound it makes while charging around. Those working in the pit lane say they cannot hear the Revuelto blasting along the main straight because of the noise this machine is producing hundreds of metres away. It is a properly uncorked 5.0-litre Coyote V8 race engine inside a spaceframe chassis, which you can point at almost anything and conquer.

The OCTA was impressive here, but the Raptor was born for this environment. It is all it has known and all it will know. The cabin is cramped and the controls deliberately light to minimise fatigue, yet it gives me a sense of total, bulletproof invincibility: a vehicle built to withstand punishment.

As Nani told me before I drove it, it needs to be driven hard. You need the weight to shift around because, when it does, barely any steering input is needed to alter direction. Everything can be achieved with small movements: establish an angle of attack, then bury the throttle and allow the three locking diffs and permanent 4WD to handle the rest.

Nani says you do not want too much angle, because a tyre is most likely to puncture when it slides sideways. I drove Hyundai’s i20 WRC car here at Speed Week six years ago, and the two share noticeable similarities in their manners and behaviour. Only the scale has altered. Both drives belong in my collection of special memories.

Tarmac limits and Dakar ambitions

As we did with that Hyundai, we also took this machine onto tarmac. How could we not? We wanted to see it alongside the belly scrapers and chin scratchers. It was agreeably idiotic, and the hydraulic handbrake allowed it to create some spectacular shapes. However, we discovered that it mostly converts 520 litres of fuel into noise rather than forward momentum. A restricted 355bhp – and Dakar-limited 112mph maximum – is adequate in the rough, but uninspiring when the OCTA has nearly twice the power. Even so, the muscular Brit does not feel 4.0secs to 62mph quick.

If Land Rover can coax a car or two to the end of the Dakar next year that will be a victory in itself

Nor is it especially content on a hard circuit. We have found the OCTA’s unhappy place, as it does not quite know what to do there. Turn in while braking and it will four-wheel-drift beyond the apex; otherwise, it scrabbles into understeer.

Road-focused tyres would plainly transform matters, but the OCTA is not intended as a hard-surface machine. We already know it is an excellent, if exceptionally thirsty, daily driver, and there is ample breadth between a quiet cruiser and a cross-country charger to satisfy us. I would take this breadth of capability over an Urus or Cayenne Turbo every time.

Ideally, we would like a little more edge, especially from the engine. Even when the Raptor is not entirely drowning it out, it is too muted and quiet. I suspect that will be most owners’ first job. I do not know where you would use the OCTA in the UK: we simply lack the vast, open playgrounds in which America specialises. I have the troubling sense that the OCTA will be used exactly like any other Defender, only with greater obnoxiousness. That is a shame, because nothing else is quite like it.

Land Rover has identified a niche and filled it extremely well. If it can persuade one or two cars to reach the finish of the Dakar next year, that alone will represent a victory. The Raptor, meanwhile, will be competing at the sharp end, generating enough noise to make the Saudi sand tremble.

Nani knows best

Nani Roma is a Dakar veteran. He has competed in the world’s toughest and most punishing endurance race for 30 years, winning it on both two wheels and four. Above all else, Dakar requires experience, not merely behind the wheel but also in the development of the car.

Before joining Ford last year, Nani drove Prodrive’s BRX Hunter. Yes, the two suggest a strong resemblance: the Hunter has now evolved into the Dacia Sandrider, and both are front-mid-engined, with a huge 500-litre fuel tank behind the seats and two spare wheels tucked into their flanks. Where Dakar is concerned, imitation is evidently the sincerest form of flattery.

“But compared to the Hunter, this is much more advanced,” comments Nani. “We have really worked on siting the occupants as centrally as possible, so they’re not exposed to the pitch, dive and roll. This means it’s less tiring to drive so we can go harder, for longer.”